The start of the Intuitive Network, Day 1 at Cisco Live 2017

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Session – ACI & Tetration

I started the day at a session on Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure and their analytic platform, Tetration. The session focused on how to take the two solutions and combine them to get what a lot of people need, knowledge on how their applications work and application mapping. Once that is performed, you can then easily do a whitelist model that allows for micro segmentation security practices.

Along with this insight into further developing application dependency mappings and applying them to the real world, we got a nugget of an upcoming ACI announcement. ACI will be offering a virtual leaf for the cloud instances so further allow the Hybrid Cloud strategies to play with ACI. Competitively, VMWare NSX has often touted this difference as something ACI can’t do, it will soon!

Keynote – Chuck Robbins

While we sat in our seats, the DJ did a few Lip Syncs battles which prompted some good hilarity from the performers and the crowd. I also sat next to Amr Abdulbari who flew 25 hours to get to Cisco Live this year! Talk about commitment… he is also a fellow Cisco Champion!

Chuck Robbins came out to discuss the intuitive network in more detail and a few highlights are:

The role the network plays has grown more important, but often taken for granted

3 important things about the next era. 1) do at scale, 2) reduce complexity (the enemy of any organization), 3) secure everything, always

If you have a network strategy that doesn’t include the network at the heart of it, you don’t have a security strategy

Powered by intent, informed by context. The #NetworkIntuitive movement isn’t just about a new product line, it is about automation at scale with an intent to focus on the customer

Cisco had to rewrite IOS to a modern API driven architecture. Welcome to the catalyst 9000, DNA center, and encrypted traffic analytics.

Dedicated onboard compute, run anything you want on the catalyst 9000s. Extension of the cloud at the edge. To be fair, I’m sure most early demos ran Minecraft on them…

Encrypted Traffic Analytics, with 99% efficacy to detect malware without decrypting it. Privacy and security in one! Talk about shaking things up, no more need for a ‘man in the middle’ strategy to decrypt and re-encrypt traffic for inspection? Sign me up!

Transforming multicloud, who has just one? They don’t interconnect easily, but let’s make it simpler and together. The point here is have you ever tried to get your Cisco Spark and Office 365 to work together directly? Doesn’t happen. Likewise, you can’t get many things from one cloud to another that customers might have like SAS and Oracle, they have to go through a funnel point. What if we can help make that a reality and go from one cloud to another cloud with WAN edge enhancements?

Enter Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

“Silicon all the way through the stack… one of many things we have in common” Chuck stated to Tim during their small conversation. They discussed how the latest iOS update 11 and further enhancements like Cisco’s FastLane are just the beginning. Ensuring that the endpoints and the network communicate to better deliver a user experience for individual applications is the key proponent. This journey continues to evolve and I look forward to hearing more as they develop.

Enter David Wichmann, CEO of United Health Group

David came out to discuss a future vision. It isn’t entirely there yet, but they played a video that was moving and powerful. It definitely brought a tear to my eye as it displayed how a woman who was suddenly diagnosed with breast cancer could receive a new type of care. From the beginning to the end, facilitated through a multitude of interconnected applications, devices, and more funneled through a centralized “control” platform that allows the user to access fellow patients for support, family, medical professionals, and records; all in one! It was great to see someone as the CEO of a healthcare organization that seemed to truly be moved himself as he talked about his family in the same scenario and how these changes will help those in the future generations.

Chuck Robbins wrap up

Chuck finalized the presentation by highlighting the amount of giving back Cisco has done in their FY16 year. They’ve impacted 80 Million people in their first year with the intent to impact 1 Billion by 2025. I think they’re well on their way to hitting their goal! Last year I participated in packing food for less fortunate persons around the world. This year Cisco has added a walkway where each step is converted into electrical energy. The intent is to get enough steps to provide electricity to 30,000 students in Nepal. This is a great idea and a fun way to give back. They’ve even included an Oculus Rift VR game as a separate power generation point where you “race” instead of just walking on the walkway. Imaginative but powerful impacts to the community abroad.

The end of Day 1

After the keynote I spent a lot of time in World of Solutions looking at Cisco demos, partner demos, and other 3rd party product demos. I will post more on these throughout the week.